Serious orange cake

I chanced upon this cake recipe which Chubby Hubby had taken from Damien Pignolet's Serious Orange Cake recipe in his cookbook French.

The recipe called for the ingredients to be measured out by weight. I didn't have a kitchen scale then, and thus spent a good part of one night trying to figure out how to measure the ingredients out using a 250 ml cup.

Here's the recipe, with my own notes in blue and at the bottom of this post. I didnt have all the ingredients, and thus made some minor adjustments here and there.

This cake is good ! Serious ! Citrusy, bitter-sweet, moist. I think I could have added more alcohol than the recipe called for.


Serious Orange Cake

• 1 orange*, weighing around 150g, washed well and diced, pips removed
• 200g sugar (or 4/5 cup of sugar)
• 3 eggs
• 150g self-raising flour, sifted (or 1 cup + 3 tbsp of flour)
• a small pinch of salt
• 180g butter, melted and cooled a little

orange syrup

• 60ml orange juice (roughly the juice yielded from 1 other orange)
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice**
• 1 tablespoon caster sugar
• 1-2 tablespoons Cointreau***

1. Preheat the oven to 170ºC.
2. Grease and line a 24cm diameter springform cake tin**** with baking paper.
3. Place the diced orange in the bowl of a food processor# with the sugar and process until very smooth.
4. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well between additions.
5. Add the flour and salt and combine for 30 seconds.
6. With the machine running, add the butter all at once.
7. Transfer to the prepared tin and bake for 35-40 minutes****; test for doneness by inserting a bamboo skewer--it should emerge clean and dry.
8. While the cake is cooking, make the orange syrup. In a small saucepan, combine the orange and lemon juices and the sugar. Bring to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar, and simmer for 1-2 minutes. Add the Cointreau to taste and simmer for 1 minute more.
9. When the cake is ready, remove from the oven but leave in the tin to cool for 5-10 minutes.
10. Use a bamboo skewer to pierce the cake all over, then slowly spoon the syrup over the cake and leave until completely cool before turning out.

* use the whole orange, including the skin (this gives the cake the slight bitter tangy flavour)
** I didnt have lemons, so I skipped this
*** I didnt have Cointreau, and used 2 tbsp Bacardi Dark Rum in its place.
**** I used a 21 cm baking tin (non-springform, i.e. the normal kind), and since the tin is smaller (meaning the ingredients are less spread out), I baked the cake longer - for 50 mins. I think you can try up to 55 mins too if you care to watch over the oven.
# I used a hand-blender, as the bowl for food processor is too small to hold all the ingredients. With the hand-blender, I could blend the ingredients in a oversized bowl.